Naked (28 page)

“Jus’ like me!” Dupont said. “I bees experiencin’ with polyuratain all my life. Mistah Dave complain that it gives him a headache,
but it bees like a tonic for me.” He paused to tap his brush against the rim of the can. “I’s jus’ hopin’ that, seein’ as
you can’t afford to keep us both on, you’ll at least let me stay on and work fo free as a volunteer.”

Uta said she appreciated the gesture but wouldn’t think of having someone work for no pay. “Besides,” she said, “what makes
you think I’d be letting
you
go?”

“It jus that, well…” He hung his head. “You know how it bees for people like me. Bein’… a colored man the way I is.”

“I understand it’s very hard for you people,” Uta said. “You get all kinds of flak from the southern rednecks and now I read
in the paper where you’re getting it from the Jews to boot.”

“They’se the people who kilt Jesus!” Dupont said. “Hung him up on a cross and poked him wit sticks.”

“Well, I wouldn’t mind poking a few of
them
with a stick,” Uta said.

“Me neither.” Dupont looked my way and smiled.

Over the next few days he shifted into high gear, pointing out my countless flaws while pretending to share an interest in
Uta’s many views and hobbies. Every few hours he would ask a question about crochet or ice-skating, but mainly he stuck to
the Jews. “Las’ night I got to thinkin’ about how you said the Jews was tryin’ ta take ovah the world banks, Miz Uta. An’
it don’t hardly seem fair to me, seein’ as how them peoples already gots so much already.”

“Well, Dupont, some people are just plain greedy. It’s in their genes. I guess they’re just born that way.”

“I reckon you’se right. Some folks like Mistah Dave be born jus’ to show up late, even when he
ain’t
wearin’ jeans. Other folks come into dis whorl jus’ wantin’ to have ever-thang they can get they hands on. Me, I jus’ wish
everybody be borned like you, Miz Uta, wantin’ to be sweet an’ pretty an’ fair-minded ’stead of bein’ late and tryin’ ta take
ovah da world banks. When I bees elected to president, I mona pack them Jews an’ lazy folks off to wherever they come from
and have me a country dats got somethin’ for everyone!”

“Well, you’ve got
my
vote,” Uta said.

The closer we came to the end of the week, the more ruthless Dupont became. I was returning from lunch, changing back into
my work pants, when I heard him delivering what he hoped might be the final nail in my coffin.

“Miz Uta, did you know David be sick?”

“What, does he have a cold or something? I haven’t noticed anything.”

“Nome, I mean he be sick… in here.”

I couldn’t see anything but imagined he was pointing to the space between his ears.

“He tole me that he likes to go with mens, Miz Uta. In bed, I mean. Said he been doin’ it all his life. Said now he be livin’
wit another man, the two of ’em together like a regulah man and wife. And it… it jus’ ain’t right. No, ma’am, it jus’ is…
wrong. T’aint natural in the eyes o’ God or the eyes of me neither. Way I see it, people like that be preyin’ on youngsters
an’ ruinin’ folks’ lives just like the Jews be doin’, don’t you think?”

“I think it’s time for you to stop sticking your nose into other people’s business, that’s what I think,” Uta said. “David
can do whatever he wants to do after he leaves this apartment. We’re not here to discuss anyone’s private life; we’re here
to stain this wood, do you understand?”

“It jus’ that… well, it make me uncomfortable, the way he bees lookin’ at me sometimes, Miz Uta. Make me feel all spooky.
It like… he can see right through my clothes or somethin’. I don’t know how he do it.”

“It’s not all that difficult to see through you, Dupont,” I heard her say. “Take my word for it, the hard part is listening
to you.”

Stunned, he spent the next few hours trying to regain her good graces. In his haste to please her, he overturned a can of
stain. “That’s coming out of
your
pocketbook, my friend,” Uta said.

He ran to her with a cigarette butt he’d found in the pantry. “Miz Uta, somebody done been smokin’ in the apartment again.
I tole him it was dangerous on account of the fumes and all but he said…”

“Oh, for the love of Pete,” Uta snapped. “Could you please shut your stupid mouth for just five minutes!”

Friday quietly came and went. Dupont returned on Monday morning with the pocket of his jeans slashed. “You ever been robbed,
Miz Uta?” He said it happened on his way home from church. “I usually goes to church with my Moms, but she got carried away
to the hospita’ Saturday night wiff a turrible pain in her stomach. Doctor tole her that a tumor done settled in there and
like to eat her whole kidney clean off unless she have herself a operation.”

“Oh, Dupont, that’s terrible.”

“Yes’m, so I stayed up all night wiff her and then the next day I goes to church and on the way home I bees so tired I falls
asleep on the train.”

“I’ll bet you were just exhausted,” Uta said.

“Yes’m, I sho’ was. I sat in that seat and felled stoned asleep while some pickpocket done slashed my pants with a razor and
stole my wallet.”

“You’ve got to be sharp when you’re riding those trains, Dupont. Keep your eyes open and look out for danger.”

“I wished I had ahad my eyes open, Miz Uta. They took my wallet wiff all my money and my ID card and the pay-check you gave
me last Friday.”

“Well, that’s a shame,” Uta said. “But look at it this way, at least you learned a lesson.”

“I suspect I did. Yes’m, I sho’ be awake now. Can’t sleep a note thinkin’ ’bout that paycheck I worked so hard for and now
it be stole. All that money I was hopin’ to save for medical school be stole, and my whole dream be gone.”

“Don’t worry,” Uta said, laying her hand on his shoulder. “There’ll be other dreams.” She really seemed to be enjoying this.

“I reckon there will, Miz Uta, but I need this dream
now.
I’s hopin’ I could go to medical school… real soon so maybe I could… operate on my mother.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Uta said. “I’m sure your mother’s very proud.”

“What’s left of her,” Dupont said. “Po’ thing be coughin’ up specks of her throat into a napkin and can’t nobody do nothin’
’bout it.”

“Well, that’s certainly tragic,” Uta said. “It’s a sad, sad story you’ve got there. I only wish I could do something to help.”

“Well, maybe there is
one
thing,” he said, scratching his head with the point of a pencil. “Maybe if you was to maybe write me anotha check, make up
fo’ the one what got stole. What if you was to make me a new check and call the bank tellin’ ’em to cancel out the first check
’fore anybody have a chance to cash it.”

“Don’t you think someone might have cashed it already?” she asked, looking down at his feet. “Hey, nice new sneakers, Dupont.
Those are really sharp.”

“Chances most likely that nobody
did
cash it yet,” he said, changing the subject. “Seein’ how the banks be closed on Sunday.”

“Then they probably took it in first thing this morning,” she said.

“Naw, probably most likely they ain’t on account that it take a while for ’em to work up the nerve to forge my hand-writin’
on the back of the check.”

“You might be right about that,” Uta said. “Chances are it would take a thief a good three or four days to work up that kind
of confidence.”

“Oh, please, Miz Uta, you know I weren’t be axin’ if it wadn’t such a mergency. If somethin’ happen and you find out dat first
check done already been cashed, I swear I’ll make it up to you, even though it weren’t my fault to begin wiff. I’ll come over
to you house and chop some wood or dig you a pool, you know I will.”

Uta sighed. Drying her hands, she reached for her pocketbook.

“Oh, you is one sweet white lady,” Dupont said. “I don’t care what nobody says, you jus’ as nice an’ sweet as you can be.”
He folded the check in half and placed it in his shirt pocket, tapping it for safekeeping.

“You’d better get down to the bank and deposit that in your savings account right away,” Uta said dryly. “Otherwise, you might
lose it, then you’ll never be able to attend eight years of medical school in time to cure your mother of cancer.”

“Yes’m, I reckon you’s right. I’ll jus’ run to da bank right quick and be back sooner’n you can blink yo’ pretty blue eyes.”
He bolted out the door, managing to contain his laughter until he hit the street.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Uta said to me. “But you’re wrong. I was born at night but it wasn’t
last
night. Thinks he’s so sharp, does he? Well, he doesn’t know the half of it. I was going to give him that money anyway, hand
it to him as a severance check as soon as I let him go. Goddamned apple polisher. Promising to dig me a pool, ha! I was paying
him a lot less than what I’ve been giving you, but what the heck, I figure I got my money’s worth out of him. Five dollars
says he’ll run down to the bank and keep on running. What do you say, five bucks, let’s wager, sharp guy.”

There was no point in throwing my money away, as I knew she was right.

Uta’s friend, Polly Briggs, arrived the following morning but didn’t start work until after the Cubs game. She was a back-slapper,
forthright and loud with short curly hair and a spray of freckles across her nose. Briggs — “Call me Polly one more time and
you’ll be wiping vomit off your shoes. Can’t stand the name. Never could.” — spent most of the year in northern Michigan,
where she taught physical education at a public high school. During her summer vacations she often came to Chicago to attend
baseball games and help Uta with whatever little project she happened to be working on. They struck me as unlikely friends,
different in age, temperament, and tastes. Uta did not look unhealthy, but Briggs, with her hale complexion and robust physical
stature, appeared as if she had spent the wee hours tossing bales of hay onto a horse-drawn wagon. She was casual and cloddish,
while Uta tended to be much more guarded, preferring to think herself infallible, especially in the presence of her employees.

When Briggs complained that she’d gotten bad seats to that afternoon’s game, Uta remarked that all the good spots had been
taken by the Jews, who, according to her, also controlled the hot-dog concessions and souvenir sales. “The parking, the players’
salaries, even the making of bats and mitts, it’s all controlled by the Jews. They’ve been shooting the prices right through
the roof. Here I am, two blocks from the ballfield, and they’re driving my property taxes sky-high. They want to make it so…”

“Aw, shut up, already,” Briggs said. “You’ve been carping about the Jews ever since you left that dump of a country. Open
up a third-grade history book and maybe you’d learn something. Besides, you didn’t think the Jews were so bad back when you
were chasing Brandy Fleischman.”

Uta brushed the bangs back from her forehead the way she had a thousand times before, but now the gesture was openly nervous.
She pulled the hair back over her eyes as if to hide herself and, after a lengthy pause, muttered, “Well, Brandy was only
half
Jewish.”

“Yeah? Which half, top or bottom?” Briggs turned to me and winked while Uta huffed and fidgeted, her face rising in color.
Dupont and I had often speculated about her sex life. He’d insisted she wanted all the black men she could get her hands on,
while I had a hard time imagining her with anyone but one of those retired Nazi generals holed up in the jungles of Argentina.
We were both way off the mark.

“Say, Uta, whatever happened to that little Collins girl, the one that used to go with us down to the dunes? You know the
one I’m talking about. She used to sell fire insurance or some damned thing, liked to skeet shoot.” Briggs sloshed on the
polyurethane with all the delicacy of a toddler, and I followed along behind her, trying to smooth out the drips before they
hardened. After the first few days Uta loosened up a bit and allowed herself to enjoy her friend’s company. Their gentle bickering
assumed a harmless and comfortable tone, and I tuned in and out according to my interest. They were debating the merits of
a high-fiber diet one afternoon when I looked out the window, certain I saw Dupont standing on the corner in front of the
small neighborhood grocery. A woman came out of the store carrying two large paper sacks. Dupont said something, and she shook
her head no. He moved toward her, his arms positioned to embrace the bags, and she backed away, calling through the screen
door. The grocer stepped out and Dupont threw up his hands in what appeared to be either frustration or denial. After exchanging
a few more words, he walked away, rounding the corner and out of sight.

We had applied the first coat of finish and were halfway through the second when Briggs accidentally dropped a full cup of
Gatorade into the gallon bucket of polyurethane. “That’s coming out of
your
paycheck, baby,” Uta said.

They squabbled back and forth until Briggs offered to buy a whole tanker of the stuff if it would get Uta to shut her yap.

“All right, then,” Uta said, “but
I’m
coming with you to make sure you don’t walk out of there with a cheaper brand. And we’re taking
your
car because I’ve wasted enough gas on you already.
And
we’re going to listen to what
I
want to hear on the radio. How do you like them apples?”

They left the apartment carrying on and had been gone for no more than three minutes when Dupont entered the room.

“Hey,” I said, “what happened? We’ve been wondering what you’ve been up to. Uta’s not here right now, she…”

“Took off in a car talking shit to some curly-headed bitch. I saw them leave. Tell me when she’s coming back.”

I said fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. “Say, guess what? It turns out that Uta is a…”

“Give me twenty dollars,” Dupont said, lighting a cigarette. “I’ll pay you back next week.” He stood in front of the fireplace
mirror, inspecting his hair, which had been treated with oils and now hung in lank curls. For a moment I hardly recognized
him. It wasn’t just his hair that had changed, it was his whole manner. The question mark had been removed from both his speech
and his posture. He stood straight, his shoulders squared and his head positioned as if it had been screwed to a post. “Give
me twenty dollars,” he repeated.